Question about SmugVault and basic picture storage

BradfordBenn

I am looking at my backup and storage strategy and have been looking at data durability (blame OneThumb for that :rofl) I read through the help pages (http://www.smugmug.com/photos/photo-video-backup/) and (http://www.smugmug.com/price/smugvault.mg). I understand that the storage is being done via Amazon. What I am assuming is that SmugMug and SmugVault is using the full S3 and not the Reduced Redundancy Storage. Is that correct?

I am beginning to contemplate not purchasing the next hard drive or optical media if the reliability is high enough on the "cloud". I understand that there is a trade-off for requiring an internet connection but I can manage that.

Thanks!

Andy

We use S3. Does that help?

BradfordBenn

Yes, that makes me smile. I kind of assumed but wanted to make sure.

I have a hunch I am about to do some uploading and looking at pricing I might have to change my work flow a little to stop burning to optical media after going out shooting and just use SmugMug as my storage solution.

Dan7312

S3 gets it reliability via redunancy. Reduced is a fairly new thing, smugmug backup has been around longer than it so it unlikely it is using reduced. Of course reduced costs less.

Smugmug storage is neat because it help keep track of what jpgs in your gallery belong to what file, for example raw, is in smugmug backup.

But it's pretty easy to use S3 on your own. Checkout http://cloudberrylab.com, they have both a backup utility and a S3 front end utility.

Last time I checked it was cheaper to use something like cloudberry+S3 than use smugmug backup (at least for the way I do things), but then you lose the tight integation with smugmug.

I'm a control freak so I use S3 + cloudberry so I can manage every detail... your milage may very. I also use for things other than photography.




[
QUOTE=BradfordBenn;1473193]Yes, that makes me smile. I kind of assumed but wanted to make sure.

I have a hunch I am about to do some uploading and looking at pricing I might have to change my work flow a little to stop burning to optical media after going out shooting and just use SmugMug as my storage solution.[/QUOTE]

BradfordBenn

Thanks Dan. You and I are thinking the same way. I have been using JungleDisk on the S3 cloud for my online backup, am debating about storage through them as well and am trying to compare JungleDisk on S3 versus Rackspace versus SmugMug versus now I am adding Cloudberry. I agree the pricing is cheaper with some of the other solutions, but I am learning getting good customer service is often worth the price. The SmugMug team gets me solutions quickly, I am waiting for a response from JungleDisk and Rackspace Cloudfiles for going on 40 hours. Just to find out what the data durability is. Using Rackspace for server hosting at work has not been a problem that has been great, but the Couldfiles questions have them stumped.

But for backing up my non modded PowerShot that only does JPG and MacBook Photobooth silliness, just creating a gallery in my SmugMug account of Originals is a perfect solution and probably more reliable than the optical media. I just removed 15GB of files from my local HD as a result of this solution which means I have 4 less DVDs to manage for backup.

Dan7312

I did the JungleDisk/rackspace storage thing for a while. I changed for two reasons. One is what you are running into, I couldn't understand the realibility issue. Amazon is huge and literally has servers all over the world and specifies their reliability, but i think all of rackspaces servers are in one place.

The other was there is no way (or at least wasn't) to get my backup files sent to me on a disk in case a disaster, (even if I used S3 for storage) like there is at Amazon. It would take me months to recoup my storage over the internet.
BTW I've found cloudberry support very responsive even when I ask bizzare questions like how can I put back together the file fragements backup creates and decrypt them. So now all I need is for Amazon to send me my files on disks (or dvds) if need be... like I said control freak.

Also cloudberry doesn't fragment files unless you ask it to. I think they are a small group but I get responses usually in just a few hours, even on the weekend.

BradfordBenn wrote: »

Thanks Dan. You and I are thinking the same way. I have been using JungleDisk on the S3 cloud for my online backup, am debating about storage through them as well and am trying to compare JungleDisk on S3 versus Rackspace.

BradfordBenn

Dan7312 wrote: »

I did the JungleDisk/rackspace storage thing for a while. I changed for two reasons. One is what you are running into, I couldn't understand the realibility issue. Amazon is huge and literally has servers all over the world and specifies their reliability, but i think all of rackspaces servers are in one place.

Thanks again. I can say though that Rackspace has data centers in multiple locations from working with them at work as our server hosts. That service is fanatical like SmugMug; I am actually disappointed by the response from JungleDisk. Amazon's S3 Data Durability is making them the leader and Cloudberry might be just the app to make it all perfect.